Grandma's army

  When sudden rains came to the Negev, the planned offensive had to be postponed. Meanwhile, the Egyptians had been reinforcing their garrisons in the Gaza Strip, predicting that the Israelis planned to attack around Gaza. The predictions were correct. On December 22 nd a massive artillery   barrage on Egyptian positions in the Gaza Strip commenced. After two days of hard fighting and many casualties, little ground was gained on either side. But the assault on Gaza was a deception. Two armoured brigades of the Israeli Army were slipping into position   near Beersheba. From there, they would cut across the Sinai to the Mediterranean coast – behind the enemy stronghold at Gaza. The Egyptian Army would be encircled. Israeli archeologists had recently uncovered a Roman trade route from Beersheba to the Sinai. This way, the Israeli force intended to bypass the enemy fortifications, cutting off all Egyptian forces between El Arish and Gaza. Yigal Allon, who was a for...

When they had no country of their own, and at the  mercy of their host countries - the Jews were, by far, the most dispossessed people on earth. It is no wonder they are known as “the wandering Jews”. The Jews are a peculiar people: things permitted to other nations are forbidden to the Jews. Other nations drive out thousands, even millions of people and there is no refugee problem. Russia did it, Poland and Czechoslovakia did it. Turkey threw out a million Greeks and Algeria a million Frenchman. 13 million people were uprooted from India in the 1947 partition – to name a few examples. When, as a tiny country Israel gained independence in 1948, it had to absorb 850,000 Jews who were forced to flee from Arab lands due to Arab brutality, persecution and progroms.  These refugees had to leave all their property and belongings behind. Entire Jewish communities were wiped out; almost an ethnic cleansing. Centuries of religious customs, traditions, and culture vanished from...